https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/25/this-founder-cracked-firefighting-now-hes-creating-an-ai-gold-mine/

“The real innovation is the system these devices create. HEN’s platform uses sensors at the pump to act as a virtual sensor in the nozzle, tracking exactly when it’s on, how much water flows, and what pressure is required. The system captures precisely how much water was used for a given fire, how it was used, which hydrant was tapped, and what the weather conditions were.

Why it matters: Fire departments can run out of water otherwise, because there’s no communication between water suppliers and firefighters. It happened in the Palisades Fire. It happened in the Oakland Fire decades earlier. When two engines are connected to one hydrant, pressure variations can mean that one engine suddenly gets nothing as a fire continues to grow. In rural America, water tenders, which are tankers shuttling water from distant sources, face their own logistical nightmares. If they can integrate water usage calculations with their own utility monitoring systems to optimize resource allocation, that’s a giant win.

So HEN built a cloud platform with application layers, which Sethi likens to what Adobe did with cloud infrastructure. Think Individual à la carte systems for fire captains, battalion chiefs, and incident commanders. HEN’s system has weather data; it has GPS in all devices. It can warn those on the front lines that the wind is about to shift and they’d better move their engines, or that a particular fire truck is running out of water.”

Technology